Family Reunion

How many people were at our reunion? Like 200 billion?

So at some point (possibly the 17th) earlier this month I got in my van with the chillin and began at 8-ish AM to drive drive drive drive drive to Louisiana.









Yes we forgot the coconuts and walnuts.

We arrived at my sister Beth's at 2-ish AM the next morning and fell into the blow-up mattress provided. We woke up later that morning, had some yummy lunch
(Johnny's Pizza!!!)

and re-packed, something or another, something I don't remember much. My sister Beth and I loaded our respective children into our respective vans, got gas and met our youngest sister Becca at the gas station and caravan-ed to the airport in Shreveport to pick our mom up. This could never have happened in Omaha, there just doesn't seem to be that kind of drive up and wait around possibility, but I guess it was okay, we weren't blocking too many other cars too much of the time.

We got mom and began the rest of the drive down to Toledo Bend, which is a huge huge "lake" bordering Texas and Louisiana. The villas our family inhabited for the weekend were lovely and the gardens were very interesting as well.


We spent a LOT of time at the pool as evidenced by my still-peeling shoulders. I'm somewhere in there, I dunno.

My family is hilarious

Much swimming grilling drinking talking cooking swimming talking photo-taking talking grilling eating drinking talking was done.

Then Saturday morning we got in the vehicles and drove to Tyrone plantation house for the real reunion. Which was even bigger than our initial Toledo Bend people meeting. The photo at the top was all of us. I enjoyed the Tyrone building. Maybe some of my photos from there will end up in the art'chives but mainly I took pictures of this one particular sunset which I combined into a collage and stuck up at the top of this page. Because I loved the lake so much. And then the battery began to die. So after that I got lots of shots of children jetting down the waterslide blow up thingy. Because what else would I take pictures of?

It was really hot. Like drippy hot.

Sunday Monday and Tuesday are a blur of the very best fried oysters I can remember eating, and really enjoying being around my huge huge family of really wonderful human beings. On Tuesday we drove back to my sister's via a quick lunch/shopping stop in Shreveport, where I am always amazed at how much more impressive cities in La. are than cities in Iowa. Iowa does try. But, ugh.

Wednesday through Sunday, the chillen and I spent time in the company of my sisters and brothers-in-law and their children. We visited the park, I fed some ducks all the cracker/cheerio/whatever crumbs I had on the floor-board of my van, my less inhibited son threw stuff at, chased and yelled at the ducks. The other kids sort of fished. I sort of fished because the kid I was helping to fish just handed me the tiny kid-sized rod & reel and walked off to watch the aforementioned ducks. I took some pictures of a kid fishing during another sunset, because what else would I take pictures of?

My brother-in-law had a crazy birthday party on Saturday during which I began to experience a serious case of ADD-overload and felt exhausted.

Sunday was great, we had Johnny's pizza again and I got a muffaletta, which gave me some ideas on how to make my own. Probably more olive salad and cheese. It looked like Johnny's used canadian bacon and pepperoni as the meat on theirs, their buns were toasted to perfect buttery deliciousness.

Then we went for a drive, which was very cool because I love the home-building architecture in Louisiana. People who build new homes in Louisiana seem for the most part to have a much better eye than anything you see being built in Iowa. Except for those tall old white Iowa farm houses, and the older better-kept bungalows that haven't had their porches screened in - but again, those are older homes. The generic new house in Iowa is huge-ish with disproportionately little windows, some sort of siding, and did I mention incredibly tiny windows? And no brick! And don't get me started on the garage facing the front of the lot. I hate that. I know the lots aren't always wide enough to allow for the side or rear facing garage, but there has to be a way to work around that. Like a more narrow but elongated home? I dunno. My paternal grandparents worked it out by putting the garage out front facing the street, a little gated courtyard between the garage and the house, and so a private courtyard entry completely allowed one to forget that all you can see from the street is a big honking garage door and one bedroom window. My maternal grandparents had a corner lot, which was like half a block wide and therefore perfect.

What was I talking about?

Oh, okay, so Sunday evening I packed up, planning to leave around five in the morning Monday. I think I finally got out of town at about five forty five, and I try to keep potty breaks short, etc. and don't really allow them any exercise or recreation on the drive, but we still didn't get home till midnight-ish. Hellish. I didn't merge into anyone else's car or get smashed by a semi so I count that as a success... but I do think for $7.50 the Kansas Turnpike could set up some sort of roadside entertainment or SOMETHING out there. Because the road was nice but good grief, $7.50? To drive on it?